Real estate search and marketing site Trulia.com today announced a new advertising service that allows real estate agents to boost the visibility of properties they are working to sell and to attach contact information to those properties.
The company has focused on securing property listings information supplied by brokers and brokerage companies, and directing traffic to brokerage Web sites, and the new service represents a way for individual agents to promote Web site traffic to property listings that they represent.
The Trulia Agent Featured Listings service is intended to generate leads for agents. Agents can sign up for the service for a $50 monthly subscription fee.
Real estate search and marketing site Realtor.com also offers agents and brokers the opportunity to enhance the visibility and features of property listings information for a fee, and several Web sites allow agents and brokers to submit property information for display at no charge, among them Zillow and Google Base.
In order to participate in the service, agents’ listings must appear on Trulia.com either through a broker feed or by allowing their Web sites to be indexed by Trulia.
Agents can identify their listings using the Trulia site, and can then upload a photo, enter contact information, and sign up and pay for the service. Agents can add or drop properties through a personal account page at the site.
Agents can select up to 10 individual listings to receive preferred placement on the site. These featured listings will appear in the top three search results when they match the search criteria entered by site users.
Consumers can click on an expanded property detail page to view a listing agent’s photo and contact information and to send an e-mail directly to the agent, according to a company announcement. Another free feature at the Trulia site, called Trulia Voices, allows real estate agents and brokers to set up profiles and to communicate with other site users.
Sami Inkinen, Trulia co-founder and chief operating officer, said in a statement that the new subscription service “is the first of several enhancements we will be making to our agent-subscription and self-service advertising features.”
